Took my young children to a cave not far from the house. Popular spot, but we had the place to ourselves. You can walk through it in about 30 minutes without too much difficulty. It has a tiny exit at the opposite end. It was pretty muddy, so we decided to turn around and head back to the entrance. Halfway back, there was a lit candle sitting about eight feet up one side. It was definitely not there on the first trip. I went into full-on protective-dad-mode knowing there was likely someone hiding in the dark while we walked the rest of the way out.

That thread led to a much larger strand, a marvelous sequence of campfire spooky stories. The conceit is a search and rescue veteran sharing the creepiest experiences s/he has had or heard. Pore through these in a brightly lit, warm house, without stairs: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

November 04, 2015

"Otherwhere" is a fine bit of audio horror. It starts off as a local public radio host interviewing one Dr. Arlen Childs about his new religion or psychic program. Childs is a channeler, and claims to have made contact with an unusual entity. Saying anything more will spoil the delights.

The story poses itself as a cry for help from a young man increasingly scared of Facebook content seemingly coming from his dead girlfriend. Formally, it's a sequence of paragraphs arranged in chronological order, each linked to a screen capture of some creepy bit of Facebook activity. The narrator sets up each graphic, then reacts to it.

For example, here is one of the early exchanges. "Nathan" is the story's narrator, the boyfriend; "Emily" is the supposedly dead girlfriend:

Note the anonymizing features, which add a documentary feel to the story. And note, too, the final open text box, which gives an extra sense of ongoing conversation.

Later the exchanges become more like a ghost story. For example, this screenshot shows Emily complaining about temperatures - of the grace, most likely:

June 04, 2014

Two girls dreamed of Slenderman, and tried to kill a third. It's a Gothic story, one that crosses between the boundaries of Gothic fiction, real-life horror, and digital media. It is in some ways the ultimate Infocult story, and deserves our attention, dear readers and minions.

If you don't know the Slenderman mythos, it's a fascinating one. Users at the Something Awful forums concocted it out of whole cloth as a kind of DIY internet horror meme.

And from there Slenderman just grew. The subject of games, movies, photoshops, and especially short fiction. Call him the first native boogeyman of social media, or the spook of prosumer culture.

So how did fictional Slendy cross over into real life without a Borgesian pathway? It's hard to say much, given that the story is only a few days old, and wrapped up in multiple layers of secrecy. But we can tackle this from a number of angles.

For example, this affair is a story about stories and horror. Listen to this account of events, starting with the worldview:

[accused attacker Anissa E.] Weier told police that Slender Man is the "leader" of Creepypasta, and in the hierarchy of that world, one must kill to show dedication. Weier said that Geyser told her they should become "proxies" of Slender Man — a paranormal figure known for his ability to create tendrils from his fingers and back — and kill their friend to prove themselves worthy of him. Weier said she was surprised by Geyser's suggestion, but also excited to prove skeptics wrong and show that Slender Man really did exist.

The suspects believed that "Slender," as Weier called him, lived in a mansion in the Nicolet National Forest in northern Wisconsin.

What a fine imagining. There's the fairy tale castle grounded in the upper midwest (a mansion? did Slendy join the 1%?). There's the cult-like sense of shared sacrifice and crime. Then the fusing of identity, whereby the girls would become part-Slendermen, proxies. And the faithfulness to the source material, locating the fearsome tall man in darkness and horrible acts against children.

Beyond the worldling, the girls concocted a scheme, both practical and poignant:

The plan was to kill the victim and walk to Slender's mansion. After school on Friday, Weier told police, she and Geyser went to Weier's house, where she packed a backpack with clothes, granola bars, water bottles and a picture of her mother, father and siblings. She didn't want to forget what her family looked like after leaving for Slender's mansion.

And the tactics:

Geyser and Weier originally had planned to commit the murder at 2 a.m. Saturday, according to the criminal complaint. They'd duct tape their victim's mouth, stab her in the neck and pull the covers up to make it look like she was sleeping. Then they'd run.

But the plans changed after they'd been out rollerskating Friday night. Instead, they'd try to kill her in a bathroom at a nearby park the next morning. Weier knew there was a drain in the floor for the blood to go down, she told police.

Very practical. How much of this was drawn from crime fiction, and how much from solid DIY instincts?

Then there's a blend of crime and young adult chaos:

Weier said Geyser then tackled the victim and started stabbing her. The victim was screaming. Weier said when Geyser got off the victim, the victim screamed, "I hate you. I trusted you."

Weier said the victim tried to walk toward the street but was stumbling. They didn't want anyone to see her, so Weier grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the street. The victim fell. Weier said the victim couldn't breathe, see or walk. Weier told the victim to lie down and be quiet — she would lose blood more slowly. Weier told police she gave the victim those instructions so she wouldn't draw attention to herself, and so she would die. Weier told the victim they were going to get her help; but they never planned on actually doing so. They hoped she would die, and they would see Slender and know he existed.

July 23, 2013

SCP is a fascinating, addictive storytelling project. It purports to be documents around the activities of the Secure, Contain, and Protect Foundation. The group tracks down mysterious and dangerous... artifacts, then tries to S, C, and P them.

Each entry is a single wiki page, sometimes with supplemental materials, such as images, logs, or further evidence. Entries classify objects based on their threat level to humanity, how (if) they are currently archived, and what the Foundation currently knows about them.

These short stories range in tone from horrific to whimsical. They use a made-up jargon to add a bureaucratic layer to events, which makes SFP seem both more real and disturbing. Characters and other organizations appear, including scientists, "volunteers", and competitors, which humanize the Foundation's progress. Imagine a mix of X-Files, Lovecraft, Charlie Stross, and Kafka.

We are the last bastion of security in a world where natural laws rapidly break down. We are here to protect humanity from the things that go bump in the night, from people who wield power beyond mortal understanding. We are here to make the world a safer place. We are the holders of wonders, and the crafters of dreams. We are why the world continues. In the short form, we're a creative writing site, devoted towards horror.

January 28, 2013

Snopes snags a nice bit of short-short creepy storytelling, noting people are passing it around as urban legend. Yes, an untitled piece of creepypasta (2012) crept out of the fictive world and into the marginally less fictive sphere of must-be-true folklore.

The following is going around Facebook with the picture of a doctor and a nurse holding down a "mannequin woman." It's obviously BS, but it would be cool to know the history of it

The tale begins like so:

In June of 1972, a woman appeared in Cedar Senai hospital in nothing but a white, blood-covered gown. Now this, in itself, should not be too surprising as people often have accidents nearby and come to the nearest hospital for medical attention. But there were two things that caused people who saw her to vomit and flee in terror.

The first being that she wasn’t exactly human. she resembled something close to a mannequin, but had the dexterity and fluidity of a normal human being. Her face, was as flawless as a mannequins, devoid of eyebrows and smeared in make-up.

She had a kitten clenched in between her teeth, her jaws clamped so unnaturally tightly around it to the point where no teeth could be seen, the blood was still squirting out over her gown and onto the floor. She then pulled it out of her mouth, tossed it aside and collapsed...

Infocult: monitoring the Gothic world as it invades yours, story by uncanny story.